2 minutes
Put it on having a process and learning from mistakes.
Jay Russo said the U.S. Army might not have jumped into his mind if someone asked him to name a leading “learning” organization—one that has a decision-making process that involves moving forward rather than assigning blame.
Yet Russo, the SC Johnson family professor of marketing and management at the Johnson Graduate School of Business at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., told participants in CEO Institute II this August that he is impressed by the army’s “After Action Review” process.
According to Russo, this review of an army operation happens as soon as possible, in the field, before an action is considered complete. The discussion is focused, requires complete participation of those involved, creates a safe climate of learning (rather than one of blame), uses a standard procedure, and records and disseminates lessons learned.
“Don’t shoot people who make mistakes,” Russo emphasized. “Shoot people who don’t learn from mistakes. The focus is on learning.
“Be self-critical,” he added. “Create a sense of urgency.” For example, Russo noted that 3M pushes the envelope of learning with employees by fostering the idea that a large percentage of the company’s future revenue will come from products that do not exist today.
Apply What You Learn
Russo encouraged CEO Institute II attendees to apply these concepts to a challenging decision they’re currently working on at their credit unions—but one that is fairly typical, so they can change the decision-making process and then repeat it, to get more benefit over time.
“How are decisions made now (a) by you and (b) generally at your credit union?” he asked the class. “What are the challenges to good decision-making that are more or less inside your own control?
“Identify the big issues,” he advised, and then ask, “How should decisions like this one be made?”
Russo emphasized that more can be learned about decision-making from failures than from successes and the idea that “experience” is only really valuable when someone has been actually reflecting on it and learning from it.
“Experience is knowing what happened,” he said. “Learning is knowing why it happened.”
Lisa Hochgraf is a CUES senior editor. Reach her at lisa@cues.org.
